Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Our friends along the way

-Helen and Phil from the U.K. who we have renamed "Bernie and Phyll" thanks to Bostontelevision for making that combo easier to remember. They were on their 18th month of traveling. We are so jealous!

-Javier of Buenos Aires who taught us how to make maté, took Jeremy to a transvestite club, and said that he knew of Wisconsin..."that's where all the black people are!" He said he heard that in a movie. Too funny. He told us he wishes he was black, he'd like to be a hip hop dancer (insert Argentinean accent). He was so much fun and if we had the money and time to visit him in B.A., we would be there in a second!

-Friends from Portugal that we met on the bumpy trip from Coyhaique to Chaiten. They had named Jeremy "sponsor" because he doled out fruit to everyone while they passed out hand rolled cigarettes.

-Japanese man that we also met on that bumpy trip but ended up going the same direction for many days and ending up in the same hostels. He has been traveling for 30 years. The first day we met him he was stumbling with his spanish while talking to the woman who sold the bus tickets (who we had been sitting and chatting with for almost an hour). She then asked him if Chinese people had more slanted eyes. When he didn't understand, she demonstrated. We were speechless and completely in shock. He was such a nice guy and we aspire to be as well traveled as him someday.

-Falco of Germany who was our traveling companion for a while and made it out of Chile with us. He kept us laughing and improved our travels along the way. He also confirmed that the words my family uses are not made up but, in fact, real German words! (ok, "pachis" may have been made up)

- Augustine and Martín (of Buenos Aires), and Aviatar (of Israel). Unfortunately, we only have a picture of Augustine as there were too many games of "Shithead" and cerveza artesanal. We all stayed in a cabin-like place in El Bolson. Aviatar taught us the Israeli game of "Shithead", all about Isaeli culture, and why all of their youth is currently scattered across South America. Martín and Augustine gave us more lessons on maté and taught us some dirty Argentinean slang. Augustine had many great quotes but our favorite was when he was trying to convey a friend´s peircing in a sensitive area of the body but in English it came out as a "person in the dyke". We couldn't stop laughing and he just looked very confused. We loved these guys.

*I only wish we had taken pictures of all the other amazing people we've met. There have been so many crazy characters!

And here are some of our favorite locals...(I promised a certain someone that these guys would make it on here...enjoy!)